


(she burns) like petrol soaked paper and fireworks

by Viwiel



Category: Reprisal (TV 2019)
Genre: Banished Brawlers, Discussion Of The Future, Gen, Johnson keeps things close to his chest, Three River Phoenixes, after the dust settles, confused puppy!Ethan, no beta (we die like men), over-protective Matty, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23672485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viwiel/pseuds/Viwiel
Summary: Joel and Doris have a talk as the dust settles.
Kudos: 13





	(she burns) like petrol soaked paper and fireworks

The staccato clicking of her thin heels alerted Joel to her presence without him having to look around. The Bang-A-Rang was mostly empty; the floor and balconies were void of people but he knew that at least Queenie, the Phoenixes and Bru were rattling around somewhere out of sight, Meredith too, he suspected.

“Queenie tells me you’re a peace keeper these days. Things sure have changed,” Doris commented idly without a premise as she climbed to sit daintily on the bar stool next to him in her black pencil skirt and polka dot blouse.

She lifted her clutch on the bar top and turned the seat enough to face him, leaning her left arm on the bar. There was a shrewd look to her eyes as she took him in.

“You and your crew killed several of our people and you slaughtered Burt and put Bash in hospital. I’d say so,” Joel didn’t look up from the glass in his hand. The circumstances had made him forgo beer and go straight to the hard stuff that came in variety of amber colors.

He tilted the glass and watched the liquor swirl. He knew he should be feeling angrier but right now he just felt lost.

Burt was gone – permanently this time, and there was no indication if Bash would pull through. He dreaded the talk with Lyla if the man didn’t make it, Uncle Burt had been a central figure in his girl’s life.

And the Brawlers? He supposed he could step up and do what he had done when Burt had gone off for his self-imposed exile but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do that with everything that had gone down. He was just so tired of it all, the Ghouls, the Vipers… The near constant fight for control underneath it all. The idea of just taking Lyla and going off to live a quiet life was holding more and more appeal.

Doris pursed her lips at his reply, “They deserved everything they got and more and you know it,” she told him, unknowingly cementing in his mind the idea that she really was a different woman from the one he had known in passing years ago.

They hadn’t interacted enough all those years ago for him to really know her, or her to know him, but he had the feeling the woman from back then wouldn’t have used the tone of voice this one did. It was flinty and let you know she was done with the topic and that was that. She did not even attempt to apologize for what she had done.

“As did I, I was part of what happened just like they were,” he finally put down his glass and turned around enough to look her in the eye.

It was something that had been bothering him as he’d went through it all in his mind; why hadn’t she come after him?

He took a proper look at her which made her shift and straighten her spine, looking ready for a fight; she appeared very well put-together.

She looked ready for a society luncheon, not at all like she’d killed her brother in cold blood less than 72 hours earlier. He noted idly that revenge suited her.

“You were,” Doris confirmed that much with a slight shrug, but went on to elaborate, “however, it wasn’t nearly the same. We barely knew each other. You were new, and if I had to guess, you had no idea what would happen that evening. Don’t mistake me, I don’t mean to insult you when I say this, but you were just muscle. Burt and Bash on the other hand? That was different. They orchestrated it all – Burt mostly,” she rolled her eyes at the obviousness of that, it scarcely merited being said aloud.

“Bash on the other hand?” her expression hardened. “He chose to follow my brother, he chose to keep me from escaping, and he certainly chose to put his foot on the gas.”

Joel looked away from her at that.

His part in that was something he had regretted in the dark of the late nights, along with the events of that night as a whole.

He had had very little qualms about violence back then but killing their brothers? Killing a defenseless woman? Because gun or not, that’s what she had been, and her having survived? It was literally a miracle she had lived.

“Besides, from what I’ve heard you changed from then on. Worried more about the right and wrong from the way a hear it. Queenie seems to think you’re being too cautious," she told him, leaning her chin lightly on the hand she had been resting on the bar. I

t made the red of hair catch light and made him note they were the exact same shade that her lips were painted with. "I don’t have to make a big leap to guess that Burt certainly did – time off or not, Burt was too much fire and brimstone to ever live in peace or even want to. Well, you saw what happened,” Doris’s well-defined eyebrow quirked to go with the sardonic tilt of those painted lips.

Joel hummed; it was more to acknowledge that he heard her than agreement to what she had said.

He finished off and grabbed the bottle he had left on the bar top at hand’s reach. His manners kicked in and he lifted the bottle in her direction in an unspoken question.

She tilted her head in a manner that conveyed a wordless _don’t mind if I do_.

He reached behind the bar to grab a glass and poured a similar generous helping in that in response and slid it in her direction.

“So, what now?”

“Would you believe if I told you this is as far as I planned it?” there was the barest tilt to the corner of her lips as she lifted the glass to take a delicate sip.

“No, I wouldn’t.” It didn't fit that she wouldn't have some kind of a plan for future. 

“Well, that’s unfortunate," she said with the same tone someone would note they forgot to buy milk. As it is, I regret to tell you but that is the case.”

She looked into the distance with an absent-minded expression, “As long as I planned this, I didn’t quite think I’d come out alive." 

Her frankness startled Joel to a degree. He hummed again as she thought of it; it was certainly a feat that she’d accomplished. He wondered in passing if it more telling regarding her or the Banished Brawlers that she’d succeeded.

“To be truthful, I have half the mind to disband the whole of it,” she waved a hand to encompass their surroundings, indicating all Burt had built.

“But?” He had an idea what would happen if she did that and what she said next confirmed she was thinking along the same lines.

“But that would result in anarchy,” she opened her black and white clutch that matched her blouse and dug out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

She tapped the pack, sliding out a cigarette and offered the pack to him. He rarely smoked these days but he figured he might as well and took the pack from her.

He slid the pack to her as she lit first her cigarette and then his.

“I could leave it all to you,” she remarked as she grabbed the ashtray from her other side to place on the desk between them.

“Or you could take over yourself,” he noted.

“I could do that,” she took a deep drag, exhaled a white cloud, and watched as it dissipated in the filtered sunlight coming in from the dusty windows.

He was kept from answering by the loud banging of a door against a wall and the Phoenixes barging in.

Predictably, it was Matty heading them with Ethan following in a slightly more sedate manner, and Johnson downright sauntering after them, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Joel, you alright?” Matty asked with deep suspicion, if not outright hostility, in his demeanor as he eyed Doris. It was like he was expecting her to go off and kill them all any minute. Joel supposed they had Ethan was to thank for him not flying off the handle completely the minute he had her in his view.

“’m right,” he nodded, reassuring them there was no immediate threat to anyone.

Doris was eyeing Ethan like she wanted to say something but thought better of it. He wasn’t quite sure about the dynamic between the two of them, but he supposed they had some air to clear.

Matty took the seat on Doris’ other side, bracketing her between himself and Joel. Conscious, or at the very least subconscious, attempt to intimidate the woman.

She didn’t spare him a glance but instead focused on Johnson who had entered behind the bar with the ever-present cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth as he grabbed a different bottle to place on the bar and glasses from the shelf.

“It’s good to see you, Johnson. How have you been?” Doris was smiling genuinely at the man and Joel sensed some history there.

He hadn’t been aware the two of them even knew each other, but he supposed it wasn’t that surprising. Johnson had been around for a long time from what he knew, the man tended to keep things close to his chest.

The man in question directed a half smirk at her as he looked up from pouring the drinks, and answered with accompanying waggle of his eyebrows, “So and so. You?”

Doris shrugged and tilted her head in an almost playful manner, “Oh, you know. I get by.”

Matty was looking at between those two like the world had flipped upside down on him. Even Ethan, who Joel had assumed knew more about her than the rest of them, was looking curious as the two caught up.

Joel gulped down the remaining half of his drink and promptly refilled it as he listened the conversation with half an ear. The future was wide open, but he was starting to feel optimistic.

Doris hadn’t killed him and from of the looks of it wasn’t planning on killing him or anyone else in the near future, Lyla was alright… It could be worse.

**Author's Note:**

> This is born out of my desperate need to see Doris and Joel interact.  
> Title is from a Foy Vance song "She Burns" and seemed to suit Doris.  
> On canon deets, I’m pretty sure it was Burt in the wheel of the car but I’ve switched it to Bash because it suited better. And yes, there was that scene with Doris and the Phoenixes and maybe Johnson didn’t recognize her, maybe he did and kept it to himself or maybe it took him some time to remember where he knew her from – who knows with Johnson.


End file.
